Modern Encyclopaedia

We have a set of talking encyclopaedia from Educational Technologies - A Child's First Library of Learning (24 books covering Life, Nature, Science & Our World) and Early Learning Program (17 books covering Alphabet/Reading, Numbers/Counting, Colors/Mixing, Time, Manipulative, Visual/Observation, Thinking/Imagination, Problem-Solving, Social, Emotional).

I find it very useful as it is still quite difficult to do seat work with Jiale and my hard work to prepare materials in advance is likely to go down the drain. Probably gotta wait till he's older, or perhaps he's just not so suitable for seat work. So, how do I use the encyclopaedia?

Yesterday we went to Jurakids and there was a huge dinosaur outside. I was rather surprised to see Jiale gravitate toward the dinosaur and continue to show interest in it for quite some time. I had not read any dinosaur books to him and not talked to him about dinosaurs at all (other than Barney.. but I don't think the purple dino and this Tyrannoseurus look alike at all!). Anyway, since he showed interest, I decided to show him more about dinosaurs today.

First, I looked up the Index and found Dinosaurs has its own book. So I switched on the talking pen (called 'Walter') and flipped through the book, and at the same time showed Jiale the photos I took yesterday of the Jurakids dinosaur. I pointed out the similarities and told him they were the same thing. Since the book could 'talk', he got to hear the sounds that a dinosaur made while eating etc. (Of course, all the sounds are what the authors think dinosaurs should make la.. since none of us ever encountered a real dinosaur before :P)

After some time, Jiale took out his toy animals (no dinosaurs, guess what is on my shopping list). He lined them up and was most interested in the gorilla and tiger. So I referred to the Index again, and showed Jiale the relevant pages on gorillas and tigers.

Then he pointed to the tiger's tail. I have been mentioning the animals' tails to him quite often as I realise he often mixes up 嘴巴 (mouth) and 尾巴(tail), probably as they end in the same sound. So I looked up Tails in the Index, and showed him how animals use their tails (for balance, for attacking, etc).

Previously I also did something similar after we watched the Playtime! performance Rocky, The Baby Panda. (can't wait for the Singapore Zoological Gardens to finally let us admire the pandas at the end of the year..!!)

As you can see, I did not have to do any prep work. And we can easily change topics according to his interests. No heartache for me.. And no stress for either of us if he does not want to do the topic I choose or does not want to look at the books at all! Furthermore, we do not need a 'big' topic to do this.. Can just refer to the encyclopaedia as and when we come across something interesting in our daily moments or in his storybooks.

P.S. I am not saying this particular set of encyclopaedia is especially good. I have not used other sets of encyclopaedia so there is no basis for comparison.